Chapter 27
TWENTY-SEVEN
AMELIA
Emory led Amelia to his room in quiet retreat as if they ought to bank some silence before disturbing the night. This man will eat me alive then tear me apart, Amelia had once assumed of Emory but wasn’t so sure anymore.
Long ago, she’d loved a man like that with pushy hands and hard kisses that hurt more than they aroused. Her friends had told her it was passion and that men in lust didn’t know how to behave. Their advice: collect that token of affection—how flattering to be devoured—and spread your legs.
And hadn’t Emory once been the same? Yes, he’d been manic with longing that night in the parlor, and she’d lost her senses right there in his arms. She’d almost accepted his offer to come upstairs and finish what they started, if only to call his bluff.
She would have found no bluff that night but no romance either. Just another man dying to get inside.
The intoxication had matured since then.
Though heady with complexity, it felt far less like spinning out of control.
It wasn’t what Emory said, but the way he moved so calm and confident.
He was self-assured and not for the conquest, but in his commitment to the moment.
True to his word, he didn’t go by halves, and she saw what he meant when he said she’d have all of him; a man who’d eat her alive then love her right.
Inside his bedroom, Emory flicked on a lamp, and Amelia stood rooted at the end of the bed.
The tidy space spared no excess other than the full-length mirror in the corner.
A pleasurable chill pervaded the room that held the faint scent of jasmine and fresh greens, though she didn’t know from where.
It was pristine, but not quite lived-in enough to know that it belonged to him.
“You looked surprised,” Emory laughed as he unfastened his watch at the dresser.
Her stomach flipped at the sound and the glance he gave in the mirror’s reflection.
“Maybe a little. It’s very clean,” she remarked, though that didn’t surprise her.
Amelia wasn’t entirely sure what she expected and had only caught rare glimpses of his space, just a sliver through a crack in the door.
Much like the man, the rest remained a mystery.
She existed on the other side of that divide now, and there was nothing left for him to hide.
If that scared Emory, even in the slightest, she wouldn’t have known as he emptied his pockets and removed his belt.
Like a strip tease, he made a ritual of the wait, and Amelia found herself transfixed in watching him slowly shedding his shirt.
Bare chested, he approached in deliberate steps that bid her to remain still.
She couldn’t move, even if she wanted. Her knees went faintly numb, and thin, shallow breaths issued from her lips, not unlike the first few times they met.
In fact, shades of that past flickered, and she trembled as Emory eased up behind her.
“Someday soon I’ll take you to my place in Vegas,” he said and dropped a kiss to her shoulder.
Amelia stretched her arms overhead and draped them around his neck. “Soon?”
She had no anchor to time anymore. Days, weeks, months—soon could mean just about anything.
Emory nodded as his hands engulfed her waist. “Soon as I can.”
With a shuddering breath, Amelia sunk into him. Emory slipped the straps of her dress from her shoulders, and the poppy red fabric pooled at her feet. He didn’t seem to mind her mismatched lingerie—a red bra and black thong—and neither did she as they admired their reflection in the mirror.
“We look good together,” Emory said, and his lips grazed her cheek.
With his arms protectively wrapped around her middle, Amelia rested her head against his chest. Skin to skin, it was the closest they’d been, and neither rushed through the moment to get onto the next.
Amelia luxuriated in the warmth of his bare chest and closed her eyes as his fingertips slid to the heat between her legs.
He touched her sweetly, a gentle tease until she melted further into him.
The man was a master at commanding his touch.
It could be anything she wanted, and when she wanted more, he sunk a finger inside and then another to fill her up.
“I missed you these last few days,” Emory muttered with a gratifying pant against her neck as he worked between her legs, the confession as satisfying as his touch. “Look how gorgeous you are.”
Amelia cracked her eyes to the reflection. She looked small in his arms. Her cheeks flushed and lips parted with ragged exhales. With another swipe between her legs, her eyes fluttered shut once more, and a soft gasp escaped her.
This can’t be real.
The thought broke loose from a distant fantasy, the feel of her fingers between her legs, imagining what Emory Holt might feel like inside of her; before she ever met him, that time when she came hard with inevitable shame.
There’d be no shame tonight. With a roll of her hips, Amelia ground against his hard cock nestled against her ass and watched with delight as he clamped down hard on his bottom lip.
Hand in hand, Emory led her to the bed, and Amelia’s heart skipped a beat.
There was something wildly intimate about the gesture, that they arrived in the moment joined together.
Amelia absorbed the sight of him in the murky light, his body carved in lean muscle and tattoos covering his chest, shoulders, and back.
“Lie down,” he commanded with a nip at her bottom lip that softened into a kiss.
Amelia obeyed and relished Emory’s weight as he climbed on top of her. Where this once might’ve intimidated, it thrilled instead.
“I can’t stop looking at you,” he said as his fingertips traced her curves and his gaze followed.
“Are you afraid if you look away I’ll disappear?” Amelia laughed and swept her fingers through his hair.
Emory grinned as he undid her bra. “Little bit.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” she whispered into another kiss, one burning with heated urgency. She needed him inside of her.
Emory cupped her breast and rocked against her as his tongue plunged into her mouth. Lost in his taste and the feel of him on top of her, Amelia was only vaguely aware of her underwear sliding over her hips and down her thighs and then discarded somewhere nearby.
His touch swept her nipples, enough to make them hard and for the rush to go to her head. Naked beneath him, Emory nudged her knees apart and admired her body laid out in offering.
“You’re a work of art,” he rasped, breathless as he stroked between her legs. “Fuck, and you’re so wet.”
“I’m always this wet for you,” Amelia told him truthfully and couldn’t tell what aroused him more—the statement or that she arched her back and rolled her hips to match his rhythm. “I want you,” she sighed.
“Oh yeah?” Emory’s mouth hovered over hers. “How bad?”
One large hand settled on her throat firmly, and his thumb pushed against her jaw. Lust darkened his gaze as his fingers pumped inside of her. Amelia meant to respond, but when her mouth opened, moans poured out as pleasure coursed through her, each steady wave building toward her climax.
“Please,” she cried out and gripped the sheets. She was so close, even gasped it once and then twice.
Unceremoniously, Emory pulled out of her and shed the rest of his clothes with a cocksure smile.
She might’ve pouted and put up a fuss if not for him on his knees before her.
Emory’s fingers glistened with her pleasure as he stroked his cock.
She knew he was big—how could he not be for a man his height—but his dick was perfectly long and thick and slick at the tip as he ached for release.
Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to Amelia to be nervous. Emory was more man than she’d ever been with; not just his size but the voracity of his appetite. Her pulse beat as frenzied as the thoughts racing through her head.
“First,” he said, his voice gravely as he eased on top of her. The tip of his cock rested between her legs. He caressed her cheek as his tongue flicked against hers. “You will always come first. Besides…”
He kissed her neck, sucking gently right beneath her ear, the first mark of many he’d undoubtedly leave.
“Ever since that night you tried to run away from me…”
Emory’s lips skimmed between her breasts, stopping only long enough to suck each nipple. His hair brushed her waist, tickling on the way down.
“I can’t stop thinking about how wet you were.”
Amelia steadied shaky hands on his shoulders as he trailed kisses down her belly.
“How sweet you tasted.” His lips passed her hips. Emory hooked one arm beneath her leg. “How good you’d look naked in my bed, riding my mouth.” He matched her eyes as his lips grazed the inside of her thigh. “There hasn’t been a night since when I haven’t come so fucking hard thinking about this.”
Yes. God, yes.
Amelia nodded eagerly, though he couldn’t see.
He closed his eyes and circled her clit with his tongue in one delicious swipe.
Her legs trembled with another lick that terminated in a deep kiss between her legs.
The tenderness disarmed her. No one ever kissed her like that.
They went for the kill; too hard, too eager, too ready to be done and on to the next thing.
Emory lingered, no moment too trivial, so he took his time as he said he would, and it started with a kiss.
A simple kiss between her legs and then another.
The sensation racing through her was unreal.
A mere fantasy couldn’t have predicted it.
With delicate pressure, he sucked on her clit then each lip before his tongue set in again.
Amelia lost her breath as she gripped his shoulders, her chest constricting and fingernails digging into his skin.
He’d said he was great at eating pussy. Great. Just great.